Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Last week, we took a look at how much should photographers charge per hour. The next step is to explore how to actually invoice photography clients.
In this article, I will explain three billing methods commonly used in the photography industry: Time Plus Cost, Lump Sum and Upset Limit – and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each.
It might not seem important at first, but how you invoice photography clients can have a big impact on the success of a job, and your profit margin.
Just an hour ago, Nikon announced their latest addition to their 1 line, and they claim it to have the world’s “fastest continuous shooting rate with AF tracking, [and] performance with tracking of moving subjects that exceeds that of digital SLR cameras”. It’s called the Nikon 1 V3, and its the first Nikon 1 camera that comes with a vari-angle touch screen LCD monitor and Wi-Fi capability.
Time magazine just named Makati City, Philippines as The Selfie Capital of the world. And as a proud Filipino I have done my shares of selfie in the interweb.
There are tons of selfies in the internet taken using a smartphone, but those do not compare to the greate selfies I have seen was on Flickr, where people take the time to light or setup their shots and use “real cameras” to take their selfies, just to name one that I always follow is Dustin Diaz’s flickr.
There are a lot of ways to do a selfie using your dslr, so to each his own, this is a quick tutorial on how I do my selfies. [editor note: Laya’s Selphies are some of the best I’ve ever seen so you may wanna hit the jump see what he has to offer][Read More…]
A week ago we shared a quick tip about using paper binders to organize your workstation. Today we supplement this tip with another quick tip about arranging cables in drawers.
Instructables user berserk shares a clever tip on using empty TP rolls as a divider system for cable management. Once you are done with a cable, put it away inside the in of a TP roll placed vertically in a drawer. A few of those and you will have a honeycomb of cable cells each with its own little baby cable.
If you can’t fill up an entire drawer, you can tape a few rolls together to keep em standing up straight.
[TP Roll Organizer Box | instructables]
P.S. and on the second drawer from the top, you can Arrange Your Photo Gear In A Cutlery Tray[Read More…]
Some time ago the wonderful images of Elena Shumilova went viral. Suddenly there were dogs, rabbits and cute children everywhere. And I have to say – these images are extraordinary – we instantly begin to dream and to fell fuzzy. Something is going on with us while looking at these images. In some way, her work is magical.
After a while threads started popping up in forums, asking about the secrets and post production in Elena’s work.
The stuff I usually do is definitely different from soft warm portraiture, also I am not the photographer on the team – my job in the process has to do more with the technical planning of shots, lighting and retouching.
As a father of a two-year-old girl, owner of a DSLR and with a girlfriend who’s blogging, I had to expand my principles. So I started analyzing Elenas images and wrote some key elements in her images down. I did not want to copy her compositions, or wanted to recreate her image ideas – which is technically not possible, because I don’t have a big dog, or rabbit around.
The idea was “applying some of her key elements on a normal family trip”.
Last weekend the family went out, the light was quite pleasing, I had my D800 and a 85mm f1.8 lens with me and so I was following my own “ basic shumilova-rules”:[Read More…]
Back in 2011, Nikon filed a lawsuit against Sigma for patent infringement involving lenses with stabilization technology (VR in Nikonspeak and OS in Sigma lingo). The Tokyo district court recently announced its final judgements, and they conclude with Sigma ordered to pay Nikon a total sum of 14.5 million dollars (which is 1.5 billion yen).
After the Great Depression, American cinema began to evolve, and Hollywood slowly started to become the country’s primary source of theatrical entertainment. Most of pop culture began its growth in that period, the 30’s and 40’s, with influences stemming from films like King Kong, Gone With the Wind, and Citizen Kane. There’s something about the photography that grew through inspiration from that age that has kept its appeal even up to today; after all this time, the 1940’s is an era that is recognized today for how glamorous it was through the art that it bred. And while we now have new and more modern approaches to portrait photography, sometimes it’s fun to try something different and go for a look that gives the portraits an entirely different dimension. Robert Harrington just recently held a workshop on how to achieve a “1940’s” look in your photography through tools you may already have. And for the good amount of people who didn’t have a chance to attend it, he just posted it online.
With how fast social media is growing, there’s an equal amount of increase in copyright conflicts as well; photography comes into the picture. In this day and age, it’s insanely easy to remove whatever watermarks you want from a photo, post it on a publication as your own work, and reap the benefits of whoever originally took the photo in the first place. Hey, it’s easy money, isn’t it? Especially if the photographer’s not some well known big-shot with clients working under their name and about 16,000 followers on their Instagram account. Most likely, they’ll barely notice that their photo was even found and posted by someone out there like that.
Fortunately, one good thing about the photography world is that no matter how well known one is, a photographer with a loyal following will always have people looking out for them. Kathy Shea Mormino is one of them, and she just found herself in some serious East-versus-West Coast style beef with a magazine publication over use of her work (Except without the rap battles. But that would have been awesome.) It started off as a simple matter of notifying the publisher and making a cease and desist. Then, for some bizarre reason, the magazine decided to respond in one of the most unprofessional ways you’ll ever see an online publication behave. Thanks to the guys over at Adweek for the information on the story.
I don’t want to sound too superstitious, but it seems like there’s a pretty contagious virus floating around, and some of the newest cameras out there today are starting to catch it. In the past few days, three mirrorless camera models fell victim to the light-leak plague, and it’s uncertain whether they’ll be able to recover from it.
Okay, the last part was a joke. The leaks are fixable. And I made up the part about cameras catching diseases.
Under-slang camera straps that use the tripod socket are becoming ever popular, but nothing really makes a bigger fashion statement than the good old way of using a shoulder (or neck) trap to carry your camera around. While getting a strap on a camera seems pretty straight forward, getting the threading wrong can lead to a deadly fall. Over at Wired they provide a detailed picture supported tutorial for right way to strap a camera.
When getting a new strap (or using the one that came with your camera), you also get a buckle and a stopper (for each side). You should use them both.
The gist of it outlined below – the full tutorial, including supporting pictures is available at Wired.[Read More…]
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
Find my work on My website or follow me on Facebook or My page
